Motivational Quotes

Art

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

- Tzara, Tristan

Best Quotes about Art

There is in fact no such thing as art for art's sake, art that stands above classes, art that is detached from or independent of politics. Proletarian literature and art are part of the whole proletarian revolutionary cause.

Zedong, Mao

Not even the visionary or mystical experience ever lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers; to be, for a secular, materialist culture, some sort of replacement for what the love of god offers in the world of faith.

Rushdie, Salman

The heart that truly loves never forgets.

Proverb

What is art but life upon the larger scale, the higher. When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

Most works of art, like most wines, ought to be consumed in the district of their fabrication.

West, Rebecca

There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

Havel, Vaclav

I shut my eyes in order to see.

Paul Gauguin

The function of art is to make that understood which in the form of argument would be incomprehensible.

Brancusi, Constantin

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

10.

Art is the most passionate orgy within man's grasp.

Dubuffet, Jean

11.

The art and science of asking questions is the source of all knowledge.

Berle, Adolf

12.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

13.

The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

14.

All great art, and today all great artlessness, must appear extreme to the mass of men, as we know them today. It springs from the anguish of great souls. From the souls of men not formed, but deformed in factories whose inspiration is pelf.

Trocchi, Alexander

15.

As the twentieth century ends, commerce and culture are coming closer together. The distinction between life and art has been eroded by fifty years of enhanced communications, ever-improving reproduction technologies and increasing wealth.

Bayley, Stephen

16.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.

Camus, Albert

17.

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.

Piet Mondrian

18.

No sheath shall hold what finds its home in flesh.

Proverb

19.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

Chagall, Marc

20.

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever -- the one who recognizes the challenges and does something about it.

Lombardi, Vince

21.

Contrary to popular belief an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs.

Varese, Edward

22.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

Fischer, Ernst

23.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

Paz, Octavio

24.

Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

Mcluhan, Marshall

25.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

Geldzahler, Henry

26.

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.

Scott, Sir Walter

27.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

28.

The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.

Chopra, Deepak

29.

It is not flesh and blood, but heart which makes us fathers and sons.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

30.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

Jackson Pollock

31.

Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost.

Isak Dineson

32.

Art for art's sake is a philosophy of the well-fed.

Yu Cao

33.

I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.

Peri, Gabriel

34.

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.

Keats, John

35.

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting with the gift of speech.

Simonides

36.

Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.

Edith Wharton

37.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.

Lao-Tzu

38.

If we keep an open mind, too much is likely to fall into it.

Barney, Natalie Clifford

39.

Progressive art can assist people to learn not only about the objective forces at work in the society in which they live, but also about the intensely social character of their interior lives. Ultimately, it can propel people toward social emancipation.

Davis, Angela Y.

40.

All art is an imitation of nature.

Seneca

41.

It is not in life, but in art that self-fulfillment is to be found.

Woodberry, George E.

42.

Creative work is play. It is free speculation using materials of one's chosen form.

Stephen Nachmanovitch

43.

You're confusing product with process. Most people, when they criticize, whether they like it or hate it, they're talking about product. That's not art, that's the result of art. Art, to whatever degree we can get a handle on (I'm not sure that we really can) is a process. It begins in the heart and the mind with the eyes and hands.

Jeff Melvoin

44.

Seek not good from without: seek it within yourselves, or you will never find it.

Suttner, Bertha Von

45.

I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather that my spark would burn out in a brilliant blaze than be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

London, Jack

46.

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

Ginsberg, Allen

47.

As the arteries grow hard, the heart grows soft.

Mencken, H. L.

48.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

Haydon, Benjamin

49.

For the outer sense alone perceives visible things and the eye of the heart alone seeds the invisible.

Saint-Victor, Richard of

50.

I'm the artist formally known as Beck. I have a genius wig. When I put that wig on, then the true genius emerges. I don't have enough hair to be a genius. I think you have to have hair going everywhere.

Beck